A Certain Point of View

About that.

For about eighteen months, I had nothing important to say. George W. Bush got re-elected, and there was REALLY nothing good to say at all.

And I got involved in local politics and I worried that if you googled my real name (some of you know) you'd find this blog. It has since dropped off the radar, and so I'm back.

I got involved in local politics to try and thwart a W al - Ma rt from coming into my city. I did it for my inlaws, who would live 100 feet away, but had no voice in the matter, as they were over the borderline of another city. Three protests, lots of meetings, two elections, all kinds of sign painting later, the W al-Ma rt is there. The inlaws shop there! I used to shop at the one farther away, but now I don't, now that I know what kind of evil they do. And now my husband is involved seriously in local city government. And the inlaws shop there! Where is the justice in this?!

So anyway, I'm back and blogging.

Not much has changed. Except the rat.

Some of my friends and relatives are "successful." They have the rockin' cars, the big house, whatever. But they really hate their job. Where's the joy in that?

I love my job. Both of them, the one that pays the bills and the career one.

When I was trying to get into school, it didn't look like I was doing much: taking ceramics, taking art classes, living at home. But it was all to get into grad school. I saw a bumper sticker: "Those Who Wander Aren't Always Lost." --JRR Tolkien. I bought all of his books as a present to myself when I graduated.

Nosier family have been wondering what my plans are, if I'm a legal secretary with an expensive hobby or a conservator who's lost her mind. It just takes too long to explain that this is all par for the course. I'm just not willing to take out a loan to bankroll the practice, among other things. And it's so sad when you do your taxes and realize that, for all that you charge, after you clear the overhead, you make more money as a legal secretary than as a conservator. Hm.

A grad school person is retiring, and she said a delightful thing -- "The road to a satisfying career isn't always straight."

Never mind, the bills are getting paid, the articles are getting written.

I've been polishing silver. I love polishing silver, it's methodical, meditative, and the satisfaction of seeing something blackened and unsightly become white and sparkly is immediate.

Still, you do it for a whole day, and your arms hurt. Particularly if the artifact you've been polishing is enormous.

Polishing silver is sort of like Thanksgiving. You look forward to it, you set out your doodads and accoutrements, and at the end of the day, you're sleepy, covered with white spots on your good pants and glad it's over.

The material you use to remove tarnish, calcium carbonate, is finely divided and often hard to get rid of in the low spots of a surface. It's sort of like your mother-in-law at Thanksgiving. Necessary for the occasion, and very useful, but very hard to get rid of at the end.

Driving into work, I see things you only see in L.A.

Muralists paintings these huge, enormous murals on the sides of buildings along the highway, using techniques that Leonardo and Michelangelo perfected... to advertise a new brand of car, or an upcoming movie. Still, the twinkle in the model's eye is really very good. Boy, are they fast -- they can finish a whole mural in about three days. Once, though, the details for the dragon in E ragon took them about a week. I hope they like their jobs. I hope they enjoy the view.

Fruit vendors with their pushcarts, standing on corners. Now, this is nothing new, except I marvel at one thing they alweays have and I really wanna know -- how DO you peel a whole watermelon like that? I'd buy one, but I make it a rule never to eat anything bigger than my head.

WHATS THE DEAL?

And finally, every once in a while, along a power line at a major intersection, I see a paper bird on a string flapping in the breeze. I used to think maybe it was a decoration from an old balloon, but there are far too many, and they're always at intersections. I used to think it was a rubber duck, but it's probably a paper dove. There's a silver weight on the end. There's one at, oh, Wilshire and I think it's Crenshaw, there's another at Pico and Sawtelle, there's another at Highland and Vine... There's another one at Sixth and something, but I don't remember where. They're machine printed, so they're not home-made. They're identical. They're blue and white (maybe they look yellow to me because of the smog?) WTF! Is it a movement? Some kind of sign of the apocalypse? A mute gesture for peace?

I have had several interesting interactions with several interesting people in the last several days. Ah, but perhaps not tonight.

Suffice to say I am reminded of the one-man play "Tru," about Truman Capote; one of my favorite lines is "You can't own anyone. But they can own you! It's an interesting equation."

For a while last year, while I took my hiatus, people were finding body parts everywhere. In people's chili, on roadsides, in jars of pickles. Some of them were hoaxes. (One kid killed his mom and hacked her up and botched her body-dump. Killing someone is easy. Getting away with it, that's hard.) It was sort of fun, in a macabre sort of way. At least, I was amused.

Lately, there have been all these missing kids. Girls, mostly. Actually, there are lots and lots of missing kids all the time. But these get lots of press because they're all pretty, tiny and white.

I think I prefer stories about finding body parts. More chance that they're alive, and more likely that it's a hoax, or fungus that grew in the pickle juice to look like a thumb.

Boy, you leave yer for a few months, and Blogspot gets bought out by Google and you hafta jump all kinds of hoops to get back to your dashboard.

I've decided that Google is evil. My BFF can't buy her house in Mt. View because Googlers keep outbidding her, and now I can't have my boring old Blogspot back. There IS such a thing as too damn big for your britches.

I was undecided about this whole Street-view thingie, but I've just decided that it's just too much information, like discussing your sexual proclivities at lunch.

I'm so pissed off I can't even remember what I was actually going to post about.

I hadn't been writing because I had nothing interesting to say. George W. Bush got re-elected and I just had nothing interesting to say anymore. War is not interesting. Death counts are not interesting.

Then Nancy Pelosi got Speaker and life felt better and things got going and my mojo was working and I was going to write about something but I forget now because I'm just pissed off.

ARgh!